Geoff Holsclaw — friend in the program here at Marquette — has a paper up at The Other Journal: Christ and Capital: Money Changers and the Lord’s Temple. Go give it a read if you’re into economics, theology, the Gift, and sacraments. If you’re curious about his bibliography: he draws on Phillip Goodchild’s recent and excellent book Theology of Money; a favorite of mine, Louis-Marie Chauvet’s Symbol and Sacrament; Kojin Karatani’s Transcritique: On Kant and Marx; Kathryn Tanner’s Economy of Grace; John Milbank’s essay “Can a Gift be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysics” and more.

A cardboard box left at a church near Lake Mary caused the closure of Markham Woods Road while a bomb squad X-rayed it and then blew it up.

The note on the 40-pound bundle said, simply, “For Pastor Nick.” In the old days, someone would have taken it inside and opened it.

But a church member who found the package on the doorstep about 11 a.m. today thought the corrugated box secured with duct tape might be dangerous.

… The result: More than $2,500 in paper money was turned into confetti. Four hundred ninety-eight rolled silver dollars remained intact, Cannaday said. The church won’t be out any money, though, because the U.S. Treasury will replaced damaged paper money, she said.

Theres some interesting stuff going on at The Other Journal that people should be aware of. Apparently not all of Seattle is in Driscoll’s desiccating shadow. Yay!

First, their conference coming up at the end of October (23-25): Film, Faith, and Justice 2008. They’ll have the likes of Eugene McCarraher and J. Kameron Carter. I wish I could go. *ahem, cough, cough — heres to looking at you Ben*

We want our blog section to be a vibrant and diverse conversation, with bloggers from a wide range of Christian tradition and perspectives who blog keeping TOJ’s mission and vision in mind.

The Type of Blogger We’d Like:

We want bloggers who are interested in blogging what they’re passionate about in the realm of theology and culture. If you’re not interested in writing about hermeneutics, don’t write about it. If you are, great. Write about what you’re passionate about, not what you think will sound cool. We don’t mind if you’ve never blogged before. We don’t mind if you’ve blogged for years. We want voices with lots of ideas, opinions, and creativity. We’ll choose to start new blogs based on individual authors, not on a pre-determined list of categories.

And third, an interview with Stanley Hauerwas: “Learning Like a Christian: An Interview with Stanley Hauerwas.” They’ve got interviews with Cavanaugh and McCarraher that I’ve linked to before. Give ’em a look, even if you’ve read them before — they’re good.

Michael Westmoreland-White over at Levellers has been putting together a series on neglected theologians that ought to be recovered. While some names may seem unfamiliar to many, that is the point. These theologians are not in our active consciousness or discussion, but the people writing the guests posts argue that we ought to take another look.

The first post was on the Venerable Bede by Tim J. Furry, Ph.D. Student at the University of Dayton.

The second post was on the Blumhardts, Johann Blumhardt and Christoph Blumhardt, by Christian T. Collins Winn, Assistant Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Bethel University. Collins Winn also has a book coming out on the Blumhardts soon.

Soon, yours truly will also have a post on Levellers arguing for a theologian that should be recovered.

Go give the previous posts a look, and keep an eye out for the rest of the posts in the series. I expect, that in the least, it’ll help the reader gain a broader knowledge of who influences who in theology and perhaps even help one establish a more robust reading list.